Thank you very much for that question.
I don't have any hard numbers, but I do know that UNICEF has done a worldwide study looking at over 280,000 young people. I can draw that up if you'd like.
What I would like to say, in terms of pushing images online, is that one of the important things to remember about social media is that the way the algorithms work is designed to make money off harmful and hateful images because they circulate faster and they move faster. This is embedded right into the design of social media companies. We can see that in the way hate speech and a lot of different images get circulated.
I think that's an important piece to remember, that part of the business design and the nature of the way it's making money is actually to circulate and promote these kinds of images, because they do circulate a lot faster. They move a lot faster. Every time they move and circulate, it keeps young people online and scrolling more, but it also means that content is moving, which means that they make much more money from that. I think the impact it has on young people is that it's very difficult for young people to protect themselves from it, to not have those algorithms push that content towards them.
I think the impact it has on young people is very different in different communities. This is one place where we really have to think about how it's easy to talk about children and it's easy to talk about young people, but when we see something circulating, like an image of.... One of the images that have circulated.... In the United States, we see a lot of horrible images of people being harmed by police that get circulated over and over and circulate to young people, and that has a much bigger impact on young people of colour, and maybe on boys of colour, than it does on other young people.
I think we always have to be really critical in thinking about how it's easy to paint young people with one brush, and we have to think about how the intersectionality of all these different kinds of content does shape and impact young people from different kinds of points and perspectives.